A closer look
Earth is currently surrounded by millions of pieces of high-speed space junk orbiting our planet, ranging from dead satellites and discarded rocket stages to literal bags of frozen astronaut garbage; traveling at roughly seventeen thousand miles per hour, even a microscopic fleck of drifting paint can hit a functional spacecraft with the explosive force of a hand grenade, making orbital mechanics a terrifying game of high-stakes cosmic dodgeball where we have essentially treated the majestic void of low Earth orbit with the exact same level of environmental respect as a suburban strip mall parking lot, indiscriminately dumping our trash wherever it happens to float away, which means if we do not figure out a way to clean it up soon, humanity might eventually become permanently trapped on this planet by a swirling, impenetrable cloud of our own extremely fast-moving debris
